Save the planet
Mar 17, 2015, 6:25 AM | Updated: 12:50 pm
This undated handout two-picture combo of artist conceptions provided by NASA/JPL Caltech shows what NASA says are good candidates for a mission to capture an asteroid, haul it to the moon for astronauts to visit. One prime candidate swung close by Earth in 2011 so astronomers know its size, about 20 feet, mass and density, but they don't really know what it looks like. These images are two different artist conceptions of what the lightweight asteroid could look like, either a pile of small rocks flying together in formation, left, or a larger porous rock with pebbles surrounding it, right. (AP Photo/NASA/JPL Caltech)
(AP Photo/NASA/JPL Caltech)
I’m not talking about climate change, I’m talking about asteroids.
“Asteroids like to swing by for a visit from time to time. Well, the problem is when they get a little too friendly and crash right into us,” explained Jason Kessler in a clip from the video promoting NASA’s Asteroid Grand Challenge.
Kessler runs the challenge, and it’s his job, to find and track asteroids. Not just the big ones, but the small ones, too.
“You may remember back in February, two years ago, in Chelyabinsk, Russia, and that air burst. And that asteroid, (about 17 meters big) caused $40 million in damage,” said Kessler.
So this week he started giving amateur astronomers who take pictures of the nighttime sky special software, “That can take their images and search for asteroids and then share their results.”
I guess I’d always assumed that NASA was recruiting amateurs for its asteroid watch just to make them feel loved.
But as it turns out, we have blind spots.
“We’d like to have as many people that have telescopes, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere,” said Kessler.
There are parts of the sky you’re not covering? I thought you had it all covered here!
Kessler laughed, “We have a finite budget so we’re managing our budget through our resources the best that we can.”
Yes, here we are obsessed with Iran’s centrifuges, while in the meantime, an asteroid could sneak up on us from the Southern Hemisphere and we’d never know.
Fortunately, Kessler said there are no current threats, “At this point, there is absolutely no asteroid that is coming our way.”
Just the same if, say, about a hundred of you wouldn’t mind taking your telescopes down to the Southern Hemisphere and uploading pictures, those of us here in the Northern Hemisphere would really appreciate it.
You can download the free asteroid hunting application at TopCoder.com.
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